WILD AWAKE news with a side of snurkleberry jam

I haven't shared much book news here, but lots of happy little things have been happening and it was time to give them a mention:

In Germany news:
WILD WACH verkauft Fischer Verlag in einer sehr schönen Deal—which is exciting, because now my German translator, Jenny, e-mails me every few days with queries like "on p. 22, what exactly are they smoking?" and "cannot find German word for 'snurkleberries,' please advise."

Fischer Verlage is an independent literary publisher that was founded in Berlin in 1886 by this dapper gentleman:

Note that he is smoking something (but what?) and has a pocket full of snurkleberries.

In Audio news:
The clever and talented Shannon McManus, whom you may remember from the audiobook of LOLA AND THE BOY NEXT DOOR, will be narrating the audio version of WILD AWAKE. This is a picture I stole from her website:

That expression? Surprise and delight upon tasting a true snurkleberry for the first time.

In news concerning Junior Librarians*:

WILD AWAKE is a Junior Library Guild selection for 2013. What does this mean? I'm still not entirely sure, but they gave me this shiny thing:

*the Junior Library Guild does not actually consist of Junior Librarians, but wouldn't that be neat?In

In let's-hang-out news:

I will be at the 2013 ALA conference in Chicago this June 27-July 2nd, and possibly doing some other bookish things in Chicago that week. We should hang out!

In other news:

A few weeks ago when I visited HarperCollins, I was startled to see stacks and stacks of ARCs which have since made their way into the world. Result: a million billion* people are now reading WILD AWAKE.

*this is an exact figure.

If you are also reading WILD AWAKE, send me a picture or post it to this Tumblr. Bonus points for intriguing locations, exotic animals, and extremely dour and/or blissful facial expressions.

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Hilary T. Smith

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If you've read The Hunger Games (or been in the mute and intensely focused presence of someone in the process of reading it), you know that it's practically impossible to put down. Stephen King compared the book to an arcade game that keeps you helplessly plugging in quarters round after round, and after reading it herself INTERN can say that that's a fair approximation.

What exactly is Suzanne Collins doing, on a sentence-to-sentence, paragraph-to-paragraph level, that makes this book such a terrifyingly addictive read?

To shed light on this question, INTERN repaired to her secret basement Book Lab, where she soaked a randomly-selected chapter of The Hunger Games in a bath of chemicals designed to reveal the exact function of each sentence.

Oh, and what an exciting experiment it was! Within seconds, the words themselves melted away, leaving only bright colors representing the following things:

Here is what Chapter 12 looks like following the experiment. If you have a copy of …

Greetings from Essaouira, Morocco. Over the past two months, I have mentally composed so many little missives to post here, but somehow they all grew worn and stale before making it online, like letters that seem to wilt the longer they ride around on your car dashboard, waiting for the day you finally stop by the post office to send them. I am at work on Novel 2 and almost completely disconnected from Internet Reality (which is to say from Publishing News Reality, Writing Advice Reality, Author Blog Reality, and yes, Funny Cat Video Reality) but I can feel things collecting in my brain for future sharing here, piling up like snow. A typical day for me right now goes something like this: Wake up. Coffee/Breakfast Write until afternoon. Walk around public gardens while groundskeepers in bright orange vests blow whistles and gesticulate madly for no apparent reason. Develop fever. Hurry home to toss and turn in strangely pleasant delirium. Nip around the corner in search of medicinal oranges; r…

Writing is a job like any other. I
write every day.It's only professional.I write from 4 AM to 7 AM.Writing is a job.
I
didn't write yesterday, or the day before that.

Then
I do the blogging and social media stuff at night.It's only professional.If you don't treat it like a job, you'll
never succeed.Writing is— It's
only—

I don't
have an industrial body. It doesn't shut down at night and start up again in
the morning like it's "supposed" to, clean-faced and ready for
another day's labor. Sometimes, it doesn't shut down for nights and nights, and
I berate it and throw pills at it until it lurches to a diseased kind of
slumber, only to emerge into a diseased kind of waking, howling with hurt and
betrayal like a grizzly bear waking up in a cage.

"Stupid
body," I tell it. "I need you to sleep you so I can wake up so I can
go to my job. I haven't worked in two…

A few days ago, the Guardian posted this handy guide to decoding publishers' euphemisms at the London Book Fair:We don't have sales numbers yet – trust us, you don't want to know I loved the opening – boy, the middle needs work National publicity and marketing campaign – there's no budget, so you're on your own I've read the book – I've had it read
To which INTERN would like to add:

Queriers' Euphemisms:

This is my first novel:

I have nine other manuscripts in various stages of completeness sitting on my hard drive: three hilariously angsty ones I wrote in highschool, three hilariously pretentious ones I wrote in college, two post-college attempts at science fiction that ran into unsolvable plot snarls somewhere around the Xxordon Galaxy, and a NaNo about two old ladies who sneak around shooting people with poison darts.

This is my first novel that's really, actually ready to query. At least, I think it is. *deep breath*

When you're revising a novel, it's easy to lose objectivity become so delusional you can't tell if you've just created a stinking mountain of goat poop or written the next Grapes of Wrath. Each scene starts to read like a passage in a holy text—or does it just feel that way because you've read it so many times the words are looping through your brain like a mantra?

Fear not! INTERN is here to help. Here's INTERN's handy guide to figuring out when it's time to hit the delete key and write that scene again.

10. The scene is not really a scene.

Your scene is not a scene if nothing has changed by the end of it.Your scene is not a scene if there was no internal or external conflict, no matter how subtle.Your scene is not a scene if you were too timid to let anything dangerous happen.Your scene is not a scene if you were too cautious to let anything unexpected happen.Your scene is not a scene if the reader is banging her head against the wall saying “What wa…

A little while ago, INTERN posted about a fictitious Character Transformation Bazooka which could make characters have deep realisations and catharses instantly, with no justification.

There are a few other weapons of mass manuscript destruction (WMMD) in the arsenal.

One is the Triumph Bomb, or T-Bomb.

If you go see just about any movie that's playing in a mainstream theatre, there's bound to be at least one scene involving a Moment of Triumph: the submarine crew realizes they've fixed their leaking vessel just in time (hugs, shouts, and meaningful apologies ensue) or a pair of starcrossed mental defectives realizes they're meant for each other and triumphantly race to the nearest marriage office.

These moments of triumph usually happen after about ninety minutes of false starts, dissapointments, and disasters.

One comment INTERN finds herself writing frequently in novel critiques is that the moments of triumph in the story come too soon, or make no sense, or seem to dr…

Over the past three years, INTERN has written manuscript
critiques for many would-be authors, of whom some have gone on to find
representation, go on submission, and basically get the publishing ball
rolling, and some have not (at least, not yet).
One of the neat things about freelance editing is that you get to be a fly on
the wall throughout other writers’ journey towards publication, and INTERN has
observed some interesting patterns amongst her clientele. Here are some factors
that differentiate the soon-to-be-agented writers from the writers who have a
little further to go. 1. They’ve been at it
for a while.
In INTERN’s experience, the novel that lands the agent is almost never a client’s first manuscript. In fact, the
clients who get in touch with one of those ecstatic “OMG agent!!!” e-mails a
few months down the road have almost
always written two or three other manuscripts, and perhaps even done a
round of querying for one of them before deciding to move on.
See also Querying …

Publisher Shells Out for
Crime Novel by Retired English Teacher in “Nice” DealSmall Press Throws Down for
Middle-Aged Poet’s Chapbook in Three-Figure Deal47-Year-Old Mother of Three
Sells Debut Novel in 1-Book DealTrade Publisher Quietly
Acquires Midlist Author’s Sixth Romance Novel in Low-Key DealVenerable Press Finally
Makes Offer on Literary Novel It Has Been Sitting On For Eleven and a Half
Months** Friends: publishing is not
all six-book mega-deals and twenty-year olds winning national book awards. Most book deals are small-to-medium, and
most people getting book deals are not teenaged geniuses, contrary to what you read online.

You are valid if you are 20 or 32 or 47 or 64 or 71, if your advance is three hundred bucks or ten thousand, if you are fashionably obscure or completely unknown. The models are Photoshopped. Love, INTERN.

INTERN is feeling extremely wonderful and happy today and wanted to fill the world with yes's instead of no's, do's instead of don'ts. Here, then, are the ten most wonderful and useful things you can do you for your manuscript to give it the best possible chance of growing up big and strong.

1. Revise until there is no "anyway".

The single most common reason that reasonably good manuscripts get turned down (at least, as far as INTERN has observed) is because a writer had an exciting idea, wrote a kinda promising book with a lot of flaws, tried to fix the flaws, gave up, and submitted it anyway.

Never submit it anyway.

"Anyway" is an otherwise promising manuscript's worst enemy. And a manuscript that has been tinkered with until its eyeballs bleed and then submitted anyway screams like a mandrake when pulled out of its envelope. Would you try to fix your car's brakes, get frustrated, and drive it anyway? No? Point made!

Last night, INTERN was chatting with a writer-friend about all things bookish, and they got to talking about agents. How the internet is stuffed with advice about snagging one (always snagging!) but goes curiously silent after the proverbial wedding day, like so many fairy tales. Just like the (presumably awkward) deflowering scene that happens off-stage in those fairytales, there's something the internet doesn't tell you about agents: Having An Agent Is Weird.

Why is having an agent the most awkward thing ever if you've never done it before?

It's a bit like dating your first boy/girlfriend.

If you are the least bit neurotic, you will constantly ask yourself "Do we talk enough? Am I too needy? Too distant? Amy and Brad call each other, like, every hour. Should I fly to NYC to visit him?"

You are the least bit self-doubty, you will wonder, "Does she/he really like me? Does he regret going out with me? Is he just waiting for the right moment to dump me? Is sh…